I don't know whether Fumiyo had under
taken any omiai-the formal meetings
between virtual strangers that precede
arranged marriages - but many Japanese
marriages are the result of such encounters.
Some go through 10 or 12 or 15 omiai without
embarrassment. If either party has any objec
tions to the other as a potential spouse, he or
she is supposed to speak up quickly. No sec
ond date is assumed, but if three or four meet
ings take place, the couple will likely begin
making wedding arrangements.
One woman I met, an English interpreter
in her mid-20s who was sophisticated by any
standard, called off a courtship after the third
meeting. "My suitor was surprised," she told
me. "By then he had assumed we'd keep
meeting and eventually make it a formal
engagement." She was obliged to apologize
to the mediator, who had a difficult time con
vincing the young man's family that it was
really over.
PINSTERHOOD remains a dreaded fate.
(An only slightly outdated slang term
for an unmarried woman over 25 is
"Christmas cake," because the latter
drops sharply in value after Decem
ber 25.) For wedding halls and hotels the
Japanese wedding spells big business, as I
saw when I visited the Tokyo Hilton's spring
wedding show one Sunday afternoon.
Engaged couples and their eager mothers
turned out by the hundreds in their best
clothes, sampling food trays and studying
pricey menus. Bedazzled brides-to-be tried on
the different costumes that every Japanese
bride rents or buys for the greatest occasion of
her life. The basic three are the age-old white
kimono, the multicolored kimono, and-the
favorite of all-the elaborate Western-style
dress. This year's in color: fire-engine red.
Western concepts of romance play little or
no part in Japanese marriage. An appropriate
match of family standing and education
comes first, love second. If love develops and
grows, that's a bonus. But the life-style of
Japanese families hardly encourages love -or
even companionship. Men are out on the job
from early morning till late at night, and most
fathers in our neighborhood were so tired
from their weekly schedules that they slept
all day Sunday, their only day off.
During our year in Japan I met the hus
bands of only two of my friends and caught a
fleeting glimpse of a third. When my English
class, which met in my home, first saw my
husband, a writer who often works at home,
come downstairs on a Friday morning, they
were dumbstruck. What was he doing there?
Japanese Women